now you can experience the enjoyment felt for centuries by ice fisherman thanks to this cellular-capable tip-up.

For the uninitiated a bit ice fishing primer may be in order. The majority of what you see above is a common tip-up rig for ice fishing. essentially it lets you set numerous baited lines as well as just view for a flag to appear when one of them hooks a fish. just drill a hole in the ice as well as decrease the line with — the orange frame rests on the surface of the ice.

The add-on right here is the grey box which is hiding an Xbee device. A magnet as well as reed switch (which can be discovered at the regional hardware store) total a circuit when the flag is down. however if the flag appears the reed switch opens (or closes, we’re not sure which) as well as the Xbee sends an alert to a base station, which then converts that to a text message to push to your phone. As you guessed, there’s a video after the break.

Fun as well as convoluted. however not completely useless. We’d suggest swapping the Xbee/cellular hardware for a affordable microcontroller/Bluetooth setup. This method you can knock back a few chilly ones in the ice home while waiting on the wireless network to alert you through an SL4A script.

[via Make]